Bill & Ted 3 Finds Its Director In Dean Parisot

Is this the Excellent news that Bill & Ted fans have been waiting for? Hold on to your Wyld Stallyns jackets, kids, because we might be taking another ride in the time-traveling telephone booth very soon.

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, the duo who brought slacker California teens Bill S. Preston and Ted “Theodore” Logan to life in two beloved comedies, have been open about their willingness to appear in a third Excellent Adventure. Recently, we reported that there was a workable script. Today, Vulture shares the news that series co-creators Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson have attached Galaxy Quest director Dean Parisot to the project, which makes it feel even closer to reality than it ever has before.

Stepping back, it’s easy to see that Parisot’s a great choice to handle material like Bill & Ted. That comedy walked the fine line between sci-fi and spoof, and embraced the meta weirdness that makes movies like Bill & Ted fly.

And from the sound of the Vulture piece, Solomon and Matheson have no intention of recycling old Bill & Ted material to reheat the franchise. They’d prefer to explore where our heroes might be at this stage in their life, which coincides with something Reeves said earlier about his possible return to the franchise. At the time, the Matrix star hinted that Bill and Ted were supposed to have written the song that saved all of humanity. But they couldn’t, and a third movie might explore how they are coping with that failure.

Even if Bill & Ted 3 moves forward, it will have to wait for Parisot to wrap the sequel to Red, which he won’t begin filming until the Spring. But as we said, it feels like Bill & Ted 3 is taking tangible steps forward, and that’s great news.